Four Systems x4: An Interview with John Bickerton by Dominic Hartley
John, welcome back to Fanfare! We’re here to talk about your new release of Earle Brown’s Four Systems. First, though, I know you had a really interesting conversation with my colleague Marc Medwin in Fanfare 48:6, but just as a reminder to readers, could you give us a short biography, perhaps starting with your composition studies?
Coming out of high school, my main musical training was through private piano lessons. In Canada, where I lived until age 13, I attended St. Mary’s Academy in Windsor, Ontario. The academy was run by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. I learned from nuns and some of the more advanced piano students at the school. It was a thorough training, including music theory courses alongside regular piano lessons. So I gained a solid foundation in music from the very beginning. My family moved to Morristown, NJ in 1972, and I started private piano lessons there. During high school, I was also part of several bands.
I was quite naive and unprepared for the next step in my musical journey. When I arrived for my music composition audition at the Eastman School of Music, the panel asked to see my compositions. I hadn’t brought any. At that time, I had only written some jazz tunes and songs. I didn’t realize they already expected a portfolio. I thought I could simply show up and choose to be a composer. I didn’t think at age 17 that I needed to show that I was already a composer. So they said, “We can’t accept you as a composer because you have no pieces, but you can go down the hall and audition as a piano major if you want.”
Not to sound glib, but I guess that’s what you’d call a “learning experience.” So, I think after that you went on to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is that right?
Yes, I spent a year there studying the humanities while composing music to prepare for a composition audition. I was accepted into the program and studied with Leonardo Balada during my last two years. He was an incredible mentor for a young musician because, through him, you understood the seriousness of a career in music and how much it demands. At that time (1982), he was already quite a successful composer with many major commissions, so, for us, his students, we gained a real sense of what it meant to be a professional composer. He also introduced me to aleatoric writing for ensembles—exploring some of the new notation related to indeterminacy and adapting it for large ensembles.
While at Carnegie Mellon I also took a two-semester electronic music course at the University of Pittsburgh taught by Dr. Wayne Slawson. The course provided hands-on experience with a Buchla synthesizer and two ARP synthesizers—the ARP 2500 and ARP 2600. Today, those synthesizers are considered museum pieces and form the foundation of that era’s electronic music. That experience led to my graduate stipend in the Boston University electronic music program, taught by Dr. Sam Headrick.
And that stipend effectively supported your graduate studies at Boston?
Yes, while I studied there with David Del Tredici and Charles Fussell. As I mentioned with Marc Medwin, lessons with David Del Tredici were very inspiring. He insisted you play him what you were working on. He wanted to hear it in real time, experience it as living music, and then provide feedback. He didn’t want to hear theories about music or what the intellectual intentions were; it had to sound. It had to engage him with sound. He was also a very charismatic man, and just being in his presence was a delight. He was confident in himself and, therefore, able to celebrate you, a young composer. He gave compliments freely and honestly and was truly excited by anything you did musically that delighted him. That kind of support is just gold—an indescribable encouragement for a young composer unsure of themselves to receive from a respected person.
That sounds both formative and treasurable. What came next?
I moved to New York City in 1984 and settled in Brooklyn because rents were affordable then. I’ve lived there ever since. Starting a professional music career in NYC, I had to scuffle. I looked for gigs wherever I could find them but supported myself with temporary office jobs. I began as a word processor but quickly moved to work in accounting departments doing spreadsheets. I learned all of this on the job. It paid pretty well, better than waiting tables, and although it wasn’t obvious at the time, it taught me about business. I mostly worked at the large insurance firm AIG (which played a role in the 2008 financial crisis, but that was long after I worked there). AIG was huge, with a balance sheet comparable to that of some small nations. During this period, I was doing one-off jazz trio gigs as a pianist, and then I secured a steady gig at a local bar, where I played three times a week. I gained a lot of jazz training, again on the job, learning from more experienced jazz musicians.
Around 1998, I started my own business, which I ran for the next 20 years. The business, a stock music company, licensed music recordings to media companies for use in their projects—films, documentaries, corporate videos, on-hold music, web backgrounds, commercials—virtually anywhere music was used in media, my company licensed. This became my main focus; some years, I didn’t do any creative work at all because I was managing the music business. In some ways, it was a difficult time because I believed the business could support my composing, but the reality was that the business’s success required a lot of work. Although the business was financially successful during those years, I didn’t produce much music. I closed the business at the end of 2018 and have been pursuing creative projects ever since.
Your latest career move is the non-trivial one of starting a record label, Simple Harmonic Motion. What was the reasoning behind that?
I suppose the one-word answer is “control.” The main benefit of having your own label is being able to decide which projects to release and when. Of course, you also have to cover the expenses, but I ended up with several projects and wanted to release them on a schedule that was timely and not dependent on another record company’s timeline. I’ve also been involved in music for a long time and have a vision for what kind of label Simple Harmonic Motion will become.
I can say that in my life I’ve probably attended fewer than 25 truly life-changing live performances, but there are hundreds of recordings that have influenced my musical journey. I know some musicians might disagree with me here, but I’ve been influenced by recordings much more than live performances I’ve attended. Don’t get me wrong, experiencing music live is undoubtedly the pinnacle, but in terms of shaping my musical outlook, being introduced to John Cage’s Indeterminacy recording (Folkways FT 3704) at the Carnegie Mellon library or later, to Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen (Deutsche Grammophon 2702 045) in the Boston University library—those were life-changing moments for me. I can still remember the thrill, the excitement of realizing how vast music is. Then there’s Glenn Gould, the Pablo Casals recordings, Walter Gieseking playing Debussy, the first Renaissance music I heard, Oswald Kabasta’s recording of Bruckner’s Seventh, and Rubinstein’s Chopin Ballades album, not to mention hundreds of jazz recordings. I just love records, I guess.
I loved your first release, Atlas Eclipticalis, of music by Cage and Earle Brown, which received widespread praise. This new disc devoted to Earle Brown’s Four Systems seems on the face of it to be a pretty congruent sequel. I think it was always in your mind that these would be your first two discs. Can you say why?
One of the label’s main goals is to release recordings of works from the American experimental tradition. As shown by these first two releases, the initial focus was on the New York School composers. The term “New York School” originally described the work of Abstract Expressionist painters in New York during the early 1950s. Musically, it was used for the work of John Cage and his circle, including composers Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. This period forms the basis of my interest. In addition to releasing NY School composers, the aim is to expand to the next generation, such as Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, and beyond.
Four Systems is an open-form composition which is written as a graphic score. Could you explain those two concepts and the relationship between the two?
An open form breaks away from what I consider the traditional narrative structure. For example, sonata form or a Shakespearean play are all types of narrative structures. In these, a subject or idea is introduced and gradually developed; tension is built and usually resolved by the end. There’s a beginning, a buildup, a peak, and a resolution. This is the primary model of Western performance art. An open form aims for something different. The aesthetic is different. Narrative isn’t the main focus. Sounds take center stage. There is still a form, but it’s an abstract one. There is organization of sound, but these sounds don’t lead to an emotional conclusion or influence; they aren’t telling a linear story. Instead, the sounds are part of an environment or atmosphere you immerse yourself in—there to be heard and enjoyed in the moment. This may be why this kind of music has struggled to find a wide audience. You’re left on your own. You’re not being guided anywhere; there’s no story or trajectory to follow. You’re immersed in a sound world and asked to experience it simply as that. The payoff is that this also delivers a feeling and aesthetic experience worth having.
That’s such a lucid summary, thank you. Can you explain what that means at a practical level?
Formally, you can think of “open” as meaning modular, in that the sequencing of the work is not fixed. If you have five major segments A, B, C, D, E in a piece, the order for a specific performance could be E, B, C, A, D, for example. Often, within an open form, the choices made within a section are indeterminate and left to performer choice. Earle Brown’s Available Forms is the best example of open form I can think of. Brown developed a method for the conductor of the piece to shape the sound in real time. Because the conductor shapes the performance live by making decisions about which part of the ensemble is playing, the performance never sounds exactly the same. However, since the sound materials are always the same—just not presented in the same order—the atmosphere or intent of the piece remains consistent.
Got it. And the score?
A graphic score can be an open-form score, but open forms don’t have to use abstract graphic notation. Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956) employs open-form ideas but relies on standard music notation. There are 19 fragments printed on a single sheet, and the performer chooses the order of the fragments. Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata is another example.
A graphic score requires even more input from the performer(s). Usually, a graphic score does not specify particular notes; articulations, note durations, pitch ranges—everything that traditional notation clarifies—are left up to the performers. The beauty, and also the fun, of interpreting a graphic score is that the performer must bring their own aesthetic to the work. The composer designs a formal idea using art or graphic design concepts—such as dots, triangles, thin horizontal lines, or thick vertical lines. All the graphic elements—the drawings, symbols, and their spatial relationships—within the score need to have a meaning or a “reason for being” within the piece. Therefore, the performer must decide what these graphic elements will represent in terms of the work’s sound. A graphic score combines the composer’s formal ideas with the performer’s musical experience and aesthetic.
So, there’s a huge amount of freedom and choice open to the performer. Does it get to the stage where you’re effectively composing, yourself, within very loose guidelines?
I’ve heard people say that my versions of Four Systems are really my compositions, not Brown’s, but I can honestly say that I never would have reached where these final recordings are without immersing myself in the graphic score. In other words, without the score, my realizations would never have come into being. I wouldn’t have created a work on my own that sounds like the versions on the Four Systems record. They couldn’t exist without the score itself, so the graphic score represents a union of composer and performer. If you don’t like the word performer in this context, you can say “producer” or the person who brings the score to life.
This is why, to me, the term “realization” is key when discussing graphic works. The performer or producer is the one “realizing” a version of the score. The score can inspire countless interpretations of the musical ideas it contains.
That’s fascinating. Let’s stay with your general approach before digging in a bit. Just before listening to your Four Systems realizations, I was engrossed in another album, a new recording of Feldman’s Intermission 6, another open-form composition with a single-page score of sorts, where the pianist Antti Tolvi takes a radical view of scale and plays a piece whose previous recordings have been between 10–12 minutes maximum for 72 minutes! I suppose a similarly longform option could have been open to you for Four Systems, but you chose instead to play principally with two other variables: instrumentation and pathing (by which I mean how the score is read). What was your objective in doing so?
The main idea was to include four different versions of the same work on one record. This shows how a single score can create four unique sound worlds. It’s true that you can set this work to any length; for example, if you made Four Systems a 72-minute piece, that would be 18 minutes for each system. The sustained notes—the long horizontal lines—would be much longer, which would greatly change how you approach the piece. This highlights the kind of questions a graphic score raises.
Most recordings of Four Systems before my release have been quite short, ranging from three to six minutes. Some feel very improvised, which is fine, but my goal was to through-compose the piece based on my interpretation of each moment’s intent in the score. One of the best recordings of Four Systems is available on Hat Hut Records (hat ART CD 6146), part of their New York School 2 release, featuring Eberhard Blum (flute), Steffen Schleiermacher (piano), and Jan Williams (percussion). Their version lasts eight minutes and 10 seconds. I believe my realizations, at 10 and 12 minutes long, are probably the longest versions of this piece released so far.
Earle Brown’s piece gets its title from the four systems on the page of the score. Was that behind your decision to make four realizations?
No, the four realizations are just a coincidence in this case. It has more to do with the total length that fits a single vinyl album. I’m waiting to see the sales and interest in this record, and if there’s a market for vinyl, I’d like to release it in that format.
By this point I hope people will want to hear for themselves what you’ve created, but could we talk about each of the realizations? The first, I suppose, has the most conventional instrumentation, at least relatively, but there’s nothing conventional about the sound! Why did you start with an ensemble?
The form of Realization #1 presents the four systems exactly as shown on the page—one to four. The total duration is 12 minutes, so each system lasts three minutes. I developed a method using transparent overlays that break the system into 10-second segments. By examining the graphic through the overlay, I was able to determine when a sound should occur.
The instrumentation changed as I worked on the piece. The original ensemble was larger, including trumpet, trombone, and flute along with the violin and percussion. I orchestrated each moment based on what I heard. Ultimately, I removed the brass and flute because that version started to feel quite heavy to me. I’m sure a version with that instrumentation could work, but it would need a rethink of the approach. For the texture I wanted for the first realization, I had to simplify it a bit.
Realization #2 has you playing cymbals and gongs, but you also use the sounds of shortwave radio and ring modulation, and it’s been recorded so that feedback from the amplifiers is integrated into the timbre. Was that the intention from the start? And where did the inspiration for the use of shortwave radio come from?
Realization #2 probably changed the most from its original idea to the final version. I initially imagined a much quieter piece, using only percussion instruments, including those that produce tones, such as tuned singing bowls and crystal wine glasses. While working with the gongs, I wanted a way to modify their sound, especially when the score called for a sustained note. I discovered that by connecting contact microphones to a guitar amplifier and increasing the volume, I could generate feedback from the gong. The quality of this feedback could be adjusted by the amplifier’s gain and by the angle at which the sound leaves the gong. This seemed more interesting to me, and I explored that sound in this realization.
Realization #2 also uses the four systems differently. In this version, the four systems are arranged in two overlapping layers. The gong part corresponds to systems 1 and 2 of the score, while the suspended cymbal part aligns with systems 3 and 4. During the first five minutes of this realization, you hear systems 1 and 3 at the same time, then systems 2 and 4 for the following five minutes.
Shortwave broadcasts attract me as a sound source because of their unpredictable nature, and they can also be manipulated to suggest something without being overt. I mean, you can tune a shortwave station directly and listen to it like any other broadcast, but the real interest in shortwave comes from the space between channels, where there is noise or partial signals from weak transmissions that could be coming from anywhere in the world. That’s how shortwave is typically used in Realization #2. You can tell it’s human speech, but the language and content are obscured by the clouded transmission. You just hear rhythm at that point. The placement of these transmissions in the mix was a deliberate choice to further “orchestrate” part of the score.
Realization #3 is an extraordinary experience where one is listening to a “prepared acoustic guitar” whose resonance and range are transformed by the preparation and how its strings are sounded. I’ve come across prepared piano many times, but not a guitar used in this way. I’d love to know how this came about.
Prepared guitar, although less common than prepared piano, does exist. The English free jazz guitarist Derek Bailey recorded with guitar preparations, although he later moved away from that approach. I don’t think many experimental works have incorporated it, though.
This realization required minimal changes from my original concept. I cataloged the types of sounds that intrigued me from various experiments. This included inserting pencils, rods, dowels, screws, and small metallic objects between the strings. Each created slightly different variations. I labeled them by sound type and tessitura. So my catalog read like Plink-High E-string, Pluck-low mid harmonic, Strike-with bend.
The soft, quiver-like sounds at the beginning of the recording come from a pencil placed between the low E- and A-strings on the guitar. I also used various drum beaters and sticks. The most effective was the superball mallet, also known as a friction mallet. Typically, it is used by dragging it along a drum’s head to produce an otherworldly sound through friction. For my purposes on the guitar, the mallets generated many wonderful sounds, sometimes reminiscent of a koto or Javanese gamelan instrument. I inserted screws or a dowel between the strings and the guitar’s neck, slightly raising the strings and changing the tuning in a microtonal way. Striking the strings with the superball mallet then produced unique sounds. The other main technique involved bowing the strings. I also manipulated the neck with various objects to lift the strings away from it. Using a cello or bass bow, I would bow the strings, sometimes creating an almost violin-like effect. I called this the “Ornette” sound because it reminded me of Ornette Coleman’s violin playing.
To manage the recording and blend these sounds into a cohesive virtual orchestra of prepared guitar tones, I routed parts of the performance through low- or high-pass filters. This approach seemed to create a richer, more unified instrument.
The duration of this realization is 10 minutes, which means 2.5 minutes per system. For this performance, each system was rotated 180 degrees.
Finally, Realization #4 is a tour de force of synthesized sound. I must say it feels a brilliant way to end and a logical culmination of the album and your exploration of the score. Could you tell us a bit about how you went about programming this and the sort of choices you made?
I set the duration to 12 minutes, which meant each system had a three-minute segment. I then overlaid that three-minute timeline onto the system so I could determine where and when a sound would occur. This was the process used for all of the realizations, by the way. I used a transparent overlay with the correct time divided into 10-second intervals. I then used that chart to decide when a sound would happen.
For this realization, the total sound range was divided into five sub-ranges: low, low/mid, mid, mid/high, and high. This helped me see on the graphic when a sound would occur and at what pitch within the sound range. I also assigned a dynamic level to each sound based on the thickness of its graphic representation (dot, square, line). Regarding specific pitches, I limited the options to four: E, F♯, G, and C♯. The advantage of using a synthesizer is the variety of sounds it provides, so I developed a chart of 32 timbres for the piece. Examples include a sine wave, a triangle wave, two sine waves plus another wave, noise, and noise combined with a pulse wave. I created multiple combinations of the synthesizer’s available sound sources and left the filtering options open. The choice of timbre for each sound was determined by a random number generator. For example, the first sound lasted four seconds, was in a mid-range, and used timbre 28 from my chart, which was noise plus two other waves. With this system, I could decide how each sound would be produced. A lot of work was done with different reverbs in this realization. The timbres created are also further modulated by delays, reverbs, and ring modulation. Sometimes a sound is doubled, with the basic patch sound on the left channel and the same sound with added ring modulation on the right channel. I used the Behringer ARP 2600 synthesizer, also known as the Gray Meanie, predominantly throughout the work.
My working method for all of the realizations involved using transparent overlays to define the structure of the piece, including where sounds would occur and what their dynamics should be. However, after listening to the piece, I made editorial decisions about how each specific moment could sound. I sometimes doubled instruments—this was common in realization #1. It served as a way of orchestrating the system layout to achieve the overall concept I was aiming for.
The Behringer ARP 2600 is one of the synthesizers you studied back at Carnegie Mellon. Does it have a special significance for you to return to it on your latest album?
The ARP 2600 holds a special place for many electronic musicians. It’s a fundamental synthesizer from the 1970s, a time when synthesizers started to become commercially viable. Before that, electronic synthesis mainly happened at universities, where they assembled broadcast devices like oscillators and filters into room-sized setups. These setups were repurposed to enable music creation using electronic tones. By the early 1970s, commercial units became available. Innovators like Bob Moog, Don Buchla, and Alan A. Pearlman brought such units to market. The ARP 2500, which I also have experience with, had a unique way of patching sounds. It became the main instrument for composer Éliane Radigue, who recently passed away in March. Even when these units became commercially available, their cost was often beyond the reach of most musicians. Eventually, most of the companies went out of business. However, because these sounds are so desirable, third-party manufacturers in the 21st century have made clones of the original instruments. The prices for these clones are affordable for most musicians.
You made the decision to make Atlas Eclipticalis and Four Systems available on major streaming services. This strikes me as a perennially difficult decision for small labels, and you’ll know some other companies have decided not to. What are the considerations and what led you to make the albums widely available like this?
Well, it definitely isn’t for financial gain 😊 – my main reason is to make the work discoverable. I’m a small boutique label at this point, so having anyone discover the music from anywhere is beneficial for me. I also think it’s a generational thing. My 24-year-old son has discovered almost all of his music through streaming sites. I admire his taste in music. Streaming has shown me that music is very much alive and creative across virtually every genre. There’s incredible music being made. There’s another question about the ethics of streaming—the decline in the value of recordings, I think. When I first discovered music, it was through record stores, it was through thumbing my way through stacks of albums. I could spend an hour in a record store and leave with four albums. Because I spent my own money on them, I cherished the records and listened intently. I had an investment in my choices, so the attention I brought to the records was significant. I don’t know that getting every record possible through a streaming service offers the same value proposition. Some say music has become more of a utility now. All streaming sites basically have the same music; there’s no real difference between them. HBO is a different streaming service than Netflix, which is different from Hulu because those sites offer different programming, and you can’t watch HBO shows unless you subscribe. But music sites all have the same music—no real distinction. Some say this will be their downfall. Or maybe AI will be. I don’t like that Spotify allows AI-generated music on its platform. The whole idea of copyright and AI-generated music hasn’t been settled. It’s a big topic and very relevant today.
Absolutely. What’s next for Simple Harmonic Motion?
Simple Harmonic Motion continues to evolve along two closely connected paths. The first emphasizes the American experimental tradition, especially works that explore indeterminacy, open form, and graphic notation. The recordings of Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis and Earle Brown’s Four Systems exemplify this ongoing interest, and I plan future projects that build on this lineage, including performances of Robert Ashley’s early graphic compositions.
Alongside this, the label is also beginning to record new contemporary works influenced by similar principles—music that emphasizes structure, space, and the connection between notation and sound. These compositions often lean toward clarity, restraint, and a heightened focus on sonic details, making listening a central part of the experience.
What links these two approaches is a focus on how musical ideas are realized—whether through open systems that allow interpretation or through composed structures that maintain clarity and proportion. The goal is not just to showcase historical works and new music together, but to highlight a continuity between them: a living tradition where the questions raised by composers like Cage and Brown remain relevant and inspiring today.
And how about you?
I really enjoy the daily workflow I’ve established. I want to perform more often, as that’s an area I aim to grow. I’m currently working on a solo piano project and hope to use it to find performance opportunities.
Finally, you perform and compose as well as running the label. How do you find enough time to do what you do?
I think it all merges together. It’s simply the life of a musician in today’s world. Modern tools have lowered barriers to entry for activities like recording or owning a label, making them more accessible to musicians. Still, a lot of time is needed to make these tools truly work. Nobody is born knowing how to make a record sound good. You can have all the digital plug-ins in the world, but if you don’t understand what you’re doing or the history of recording techniques and why they exist, you won’t be successful at making records. The same applies to running a label. Yes, recording has become more affordable than before, but for an experimental music label where we’re talking about moving hundreds rather than thousands of units, managing it requires an understanding of budgets, marketing, and audience.
John, this has been an absolute treat. Thanks so much for your time and your insights. I hope we can speak again. I’ll be looking out for those new SHM recordings!
EARLE BROWN Four Systems • Agata Manka (vn); David Gould (b cl); John Bickerton (perc, electric pn, melodica, wave dr, shortwave radio, elec, prepared gtr, syn) • SIMPLE HARMONIC MOTION 26001 (45:32)
Film
Artistes Burlesques (2018) — A short experimental film I created in 2018, using the soundtrack from my jazz album Shadow Boxes (2001) on Leo Lab Records. The film’s concept was greatly influenced by the American artist Joseph Cornell, whose filmmaking in the 1930s, especially his famous Rose Hobart, has since become one of America’s most famous surrealist short films.